


A Romantic Distraction

by lyricsaboutcats



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Cohabitation, F/M, Fluff, Interspecies Romance, Light Angst, Sara is the Pathfinder's sibling, Slice of (Nexus) Life, Slow Burn, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24106471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricsaboutcats/pseuds/lyricsaboutcats
Summary: When Scott keeps the truth of Andromeda from his sister, telling her through Sam that it’s a wonderful place where her father is alive, Jarun Tann finds himself telling her what really happened and unexpectedly becoming her confidant.And after Sara Ryder moves into his quarters, disrupting his carefully scheduled existence as the eighth Director, things between them get complicated.
Relationships: Female Ryder | Sara/Jarun Tann
Comments: 20
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Tann knew himself, his limitations. All his life he’d battled an inability to filter out distractions. When he needed to think, really think, he required absolute silence."
> 
> -Nexus Uprising

When the salarian named Jarun Tann had been revived from cryo-sleep as the eighth acting Director of the Andromeda Initiative, he had awoken to a disaster that extinguished the seven acting directors that came before him. A space anomaly called the Scourge, with its snake-like storm of tendrils holding the Andromeda galaxy in a tight grasp, had decided to devour the expedition as soon as they arrived.

But, even bestowed by such chaos, the title of _Director_ had conjured expectations within his mind of drinking champagne in a toast to the eventual success of the colonial mission, and tailored uniforms that fit him like a glove. It had promised respect and admiration, with his entire name etched into a galactic history book.

And Tann rather liked the idea of that. He hadn't experienced any of those things back in the Milky Way.

However, as time passed, his new title brought with it none of those things. Instead, he was given a star cluster where new disasters waited around every corner, and a colonial space station called the Nexus that was just barely scraping by. And, in this particular moment that he found himself in, he had inherited a colony ship called the Ark Hyperion. It was full of humans who were ignoring his existence in their medical bay.

He tugged on the sleeves of his blue and white uniform, which never seemed quite long enough, and stood towering among the humans beneath sterile flourescent lights. They were all rushing around like the insects from Eos that Professor Herik kept in a jar with a spot of sugar water, but no one was volunteering to tell him why.

And that was very vexing.

"Out of my way," a nurse exclaimed as he hurtled by. He was carrying a red clipboard and his mouth hung open like a fish.

Tann stepped aside, watched everything with black eyes. The possibilities of the medical staff's agitation expanded within him like a fractal until it collapsed into the simplest explanation. "Is there an emergency of some sort?" he asked another human with blonde hair who moved past him. She was an aide, judging from her uniform.

She stopped as if a ghost had appeared in front of her and let out a squeak of noise. "Tann," she said, clutching her data-pad. "Um, no. Everything is fine. Just totally fine."

Tann heard a loud thump as someone upended a storage container. "It doesn't look fine at all," he said. "And you've missed your hourly status report. I'd like to know what's happening."

Another aide stopped, apparently to rescue the first. He smiled tightly. "Nothing's happening. I think we just decided to send a hardcopy of our report to your office, that's all. It's probably waiting for you right on your desk."

"Are you aware that the intra-net is functioning?" Tann asked the man curiously. "I assumed you were capable of using the technology provided to you instead of wasting paper." He attempted to smile in a friendly way. "Perhaps I'm mistaken."

The aides exchanged glances and the man shook his head. "There just isn't much going on," the woman explained. "It's boring down here so we have to entertain ourselves."

Tann's smile faded. "And so situations like this are... Entertaining to humans?"

The aides nodded their heads in unison, grinned widely at him. Behind them several people had begun sweeping in and out of examination rooms and supply closets. One of the nurses stuck her head beneath a medical bed, with her face surfacing as a frown before disappearing beneath another chrome-colored mattress.

Tann felt his patience wane. "You've lost something, haven't you?"

"No," the aides both squeaked.

He narrowed his eyes, then turned around to leave without saying anything further. They weren't going to be helpful. More than that, they obviously weren't going to give him his hourly report. He doubted that it was actually on his desk.

A groan threatened the back of his throat as he left. Not knowing what was going on in one of his departments was going to gnaw at him all day. The dream of the Andromeda Initiative was fragile, and in his mind the Nexus required constant, meticulous tending to achieve it. He didn't believe in fully entrusting an inch of it, or its colony ships, to other people.

And if something was happening, even just a misplaced pencil, he wanted to _know_ about it.

Once he was in the relative silence of the hallway he scanned through his memory of the scene, quibbling over the details while the ship hummed beneath his feet. All of the equipment had been intact and functioning. No one was bleeding. The head doctor, Harry Carlyle, hadn't been there, but that wasn't particularly unusual. Humans had a tendency toward schedules that they didn't often stick to.

Still, his best bet for a report would be Doctor Carlyle, wherever the man was. Tann started toward the cabins assigned to essential personnel. He walked past Captain Dunn's personal quarters and then beyond the neighboring AI computer core, with his toes padding lightly on the steel floor and his arms hooked behind his back.

When he turned around a corner he stopped. The ship's cryogenic entrance was open and a draft was seeping out of its doorway in a drifting cloud of fog.

Tann blinked, confronted by the unexpected cloud. He felt the chill slip against his ankles as the fog crept further into the hall. But there was no reason for the door to be open. The Hyperion's wake protocols had been halted until further notice. The asari colony ship, the Ark Leusinia, held emergency priority due to the damage running along its outer hull.

And as Tann approached, he could see that an IV needle and a stray length of translucent medical tubing were triggering the door's sensor. The door attempted to close, then opened again with a cautious snap when it encountered the tubing on the floor.

The sound echoed throughout the hallway. A few drops of red human blood were splattered next to the needle.

Watching the movement repeat, Tann's surprise evaporated and he realized exactly what he'd missed in the medical bay. He used his toe to push aside the tubing and entered cryogenics, felt the chill rush upward over his horns and slip down his spine. The door shut behind him.

Unlike the rest of the ark, the ceilings inside cryogenics were high enough to give the space a cathedral-like quality. And there were no staff assigned to this place; it was far too cold. Metal pods full of humans stacked upward all around him, silver and frosted with small windows revealing their sleeping faces.

A sense of dread crept over him while his gaze drifted along so many alien faces. Tann usually enjoyed quiet places, but the cold immediately weighed him down here and the silence was too omnipresent with the possibility of death to be comforting. He looked away from the pods and found a discarded medical bandage strewn along the floor. He followed the length of it, frowning.

And he was beginning to understand why the medical staff had avoided their report. In his memory there was an empty bed in the corner of their bay, with a halo of machinery that was missing its occupant. The Pathfinder's sister, Sara Ryder, must have woken up from her coma. She had woken up and they had lost her somehow.

It was the only possibility. No one had wanted to tell Tann or, even worse, put the information into the Hyperion's computer and risk Scott Ryder himself finding out through his connection to the ship's artificial intelligence, SAM. Tann tried to imagine telling Ryder that his sister had been injured, just as the staff must have imagined, and he went through several possible scenarios that all ended very badly.

 _If_ she had been injured, he corrected himself, setting the scenarios aside. It all came down to mathematical possibilities, just like everything else. Numbers and white noise.

_If, if, if._

Tann walked faster, with every breath shocking his amphibious lungs. He found another bandage.

And he had never met Sara before, only witnessed her pale form sleeping in the metal halo and once, later on, conjured a picture of her smiling profile on a holo-screen. The two memories weren't congruent at all. And they didn't match up with the third image, which occured when he reached the end of the second bandage and looked up.

Sara, now awake, was using one of the free-standing computer podiums at the end of the walkway. And she was having a terrible time by the sound of it. She was pleading with the holo-screen, very faintly. She wore a medical gown that fully exposed her backside.

Her brown hair shifted over her shoulders and bare skin while she tapped the side of the console. "Please open," she kept saying as she tapped. "Please, please, please. _Open sesame_?"

The computer beeped at her, unsympathetic. Sara sighed and she leaned over, shutting everything off and then on again. The light green gown drifted away from the asari-esque curves of her body.

Tann watched all of this while his brow slowly rose, felt a ripple of nervousness. He cycled through ideas on how to approach the situation with a minimum of distress on both sides. But before he had a chance to try anything at all Sara looked back over her shoulder, sensing his presence.

For a moment they stared at one another in the silence, both wide-eyed.

Sara spoke first. "Oh," she breathed, exhaling a small cloud and turning around. She pulled the medical gown as far down over her thighs as she could, which wasn't very far at all. "Oh," she said again, embarrassed. She backed up against the console, looked down at her bare feet.

Thankfully, she didn't scream.

Tann remained frozen for a moment. Then he blinked and cleared his throat in a way that he hoped sounded very apologetic. He dipped his horns forward to show a lack of ill intention. "Do you require assistance with the technology provided to you?"

"No, I..." She trailed off, gathered her courage and then tried again. "The nurses wouldn't let me use the computer. They said I had to wait."

Tann's earlier theory that the medical staff couldn't operate their intra-net was gaining ground. But Sara seemed uninjured, and he was glad for that. He said, "So you came here by yourself to operate one unassisted?"

"Yes. Everyone keeps saying my dad is dead," she replied quietly.

"That's correct," he told her. "Alec Ryder passed in an incident on one of the colony worlds."

She shook her head, clutching the fabric at her thighs tighter. "I remember talking to Scott. He said everything was fine."

Tann's brow dropped down at the impossibility of her statement. Scott Ryder had been in a different star system for weeks. And now that Tann had a chance to notice, Sara appeared as if she was still disoriented from waking up. She wasn't bothered that he knew exactly who her father was, or who she was. On the contrary, her eyes were distant and a little dreamy.

He asked, "Sara, are you aware that you've been in a coma?"

"Yes, I know," she answered, glancing up at him. "Scott told me that when we talked through SAM. He told me about everything that happened so far." She hesitated, looking confused for a moment before pushing it down. "I don't remember exactly when it was," she admitted.

"I suppose it would be very difficult to tell," Tann said carefully, playing along for the moment. "What else did he say to you?"

She frowned, looked down again. "That the golden worlds were beautiful. He said Andromeda was a paradise."

Tann nodded, let any other questions go. That sounded about right. He wouldn't have even needed to ask, not if her story about speaking to her brother was true. Scott Ryder had been approaching the Andromeda galaxy with an optimism that bordered on manic, and one that was enforced on everything around him whether it was warranted or not. 

Publically, it was an incredible boone to the struggling Andromeda Initiative.

Tann approached Sara, then leaned over to meet her eyes. She was still clutching her gown but she didn't seem afraid of him. His stomach sank as he appraised her. She must have woken up no more than an hour ago. But it would be better to tell her the truth right away, and privately. He had learned that through bitter experience.

"Your brother was incorrect," he said as gently as he could. "We've encountered an energy cloud called the Scourge that damaged the Nexus and your ark. Most of the golden worlds have been affected by it. Many people are dead or unaccounted for."

"Oh," she murmured, losing interest in him and looking away. "You're just like everyone else around here."

The comment held an unexpected sting. "You can't stay in the cold like this," he said, pushing it down. "We'll sort everything out once you've received medical attention."

"No," she said forcefully. "If you're not going to help me, go away."

Tann straightened up again, exhaled a cloudy puff of air and growing frustration. He needed to do something to get her back into the medical bay. He ran through his options, none of which were ideal, and picked the one that didn't involve giving up and leaving her to freeze to death or dragging her down a hallway while she fought with him.

He started up the computer and logged into it. He quickly searched for and found a personal log in the database detailing that communication with Sara had been attempted six weeks ago through the SAM. But there was no update about its success.

Tann shook his head. So her story was probably true. The implications were interesting, but he didn't have time for any of them right now. He opened the historical database. "You may look at the files," he explained to her, gesturing. "Anything you'd like, everything you might want to know."

She watched him suspiciously. "Really?"

"Yes." He stepped behind the console so her clothed side would remain facing him. "But please move quickly," he added. "I'll freeze to death before you do, even with more clothes on."

Sara nodded with a glance up at his horns, as if they were a surprise that she hadn't noticed before. Then she began typing at the console. Tann waited as patiently as he could.

And, as she queried the database, she looked so much like her brother that it was startling. But where Scott was broad shouldered and held the confidence of a young man who was succeeding at everything he attempted, Sara was petite and looked as if the galaxy had begun to crash down around her. She had gray eyes that perfectly matched the Nexus.

"He lied to me," she said softly after a few minutes had passed.

"Scott has taken up the position of The Pathfinder as a successor to your father," Tann explained to her over the translucent orange light of the holo-screen. "He's currently in the Nol system working with the inhabitants there. Most of the lifeforms we've encountered have been hostile."

"So it's a nightmare," she said, still reading. She opened a few more files and then closed the console. "Thank you for telling me," she said unsteadily.

Tann began to say something in response but she turned away from him, seemed to forget that he was even there or that her gown was one sided. She sat down on a nearby bench with a small thump and covered her face with her hands.

Tann followed and crouched down in front of her. "Sara," he said. "We have to go."

"Why wouldn't he tell me something like that?" she said through her hands. Her voice was fragile.

He felt his stomach sink further, and he thought of the files that he had opened for her. There were ghosts residing within the database, ghosts he had kept the truth from until it was too late. Each one had their own lengthy report of disaster and failure, with marks left behind.

And Tann, who wanted his name etched into a history book, knew that it might be etched there above a list of his mistakes.

He said to Sara, "Perhaps your brother didn't know how to tell you what was really happening." He moved her hands away from her face, set them in her lap. They were freezing. "I'm sorry about your father," he continued. "I'm sure he would have wanted us to do our best."

She looked down at their hands. "Did you lose anyone?"

"I came here by myself," he told her. "But I lost more people than I should have."

She frowned at that, lifted her eyes to the silver pods all around them. "It's really cold in here," she murmured, as if she had just noticed it for the first time.

Tann nodded in agreement. He unclasped the buttons of his shirt, took it off and placed it over her shoulders. It was too big for her and he had to fold the collar down, but it covered her up well enough. It would have to do. Sara watched him move her hair out of the way but didn't stop him. He moved a few strands out of her face.

"You don't have to do that," she said.

"I'm taking you back to the medical bay now," he said.

Then he stood up. She sighed, and after a moment she held up her hands with her fingers covered by long sleeves. She let him pick her up. "Okay," she said as he did so. She took a breath and held onto him. "Okay," she said again. "Please don't leave me by myself in there."

He held her tightly as he headed back down the corridor. Sara's legs dangled against his thighs and her arms were wrapped around his shoulders. And, just as the bare skin on his back began to pinch painfully against the chill, they reached the entrance of cryogenics. The medical staff had expanded their search to the hallway and he passed by a few of them with a calm, professional expression, as if he wasn't shirtless at all and wasn't carrying the patient they had lost.

"Tann?" someone said in surprise as he walked past.

"Wait, is that Sara?" someone else said.

He ignored them. Now that he had their attention, he didn't truly want it. Humans could be uncharitable about the hollow nature of salarian chests, among other things. He walked through the crowd with as much dignity as he could and returned to the medical bay.

Sara clutched him tightly and buried her face in the space between his shoulder and his neck. "Please don't leave me by myself," she said again.

Tann blinked at the sensation, surprised for a moment as bright white light drenched him. "It's all right," he told her. "I'm going to stay with you."

And Doctor Carlyle was furious. Tann could hear the human man's voice before he even saw him. "You need to call me if something like this happens. I don't care if I'm on lunch," he was saying to a nurse. "We need to alert security and begin a full search of every pressurized area. Christ, someone needs to tell..." Carlyle trailed off when he saw who was walking toward him with Sara. "Tann," he finished.

The relief in Carlyle's eyes didn't reach his voice. Everyone else in the medbay turned and looked as if they had never seen Tann before and never wanted to see him again. The fish mouthed man had opened his mouth so wide he resembled a _gwaskin_ from Sur'Kesh.

"This is exactly why reports are required hourly," Tann declared to them all through chattering teeth.


	2. Chapter 2

Tann raised his arms high over his head and stretched. He had been standing and working for twelve galactic hours. In front of him, a blue holo-screen flickered, waiting patiently for him to continue. It displayed graphs and percentages and endless numbers scrolling by, all building a concise picture of the station's current status for him.

And numbers, unlike hourly reports, were perfectly reliable.

But everything in the office around him reflected the original human Director's dream of intergalactic travel, from the pleasing silver curves of the architecture right down to the less pleasing size of the chairs. As a salarian Tann's stature was too high to benefit from any of its calculated ergonomic planning. Even his fingers were too long. 

On this day, his fingers seemed even longer. The desk appeared much smaller. It was difficult to focus. Tann was always prone to distraction and lately it had been getting worse. He didn't know why.

He stole a glance at his unlikely position in the reflection of the window beside the Director's desk, then willed himself to focus on the tasks at hand. Complaints needed to be answered and directives needed to be sent. The hydroponics deck required more water. The helium-3 outpost was coming along right on schedule. And Colonial Director Foster Addison was asking for yet another complement of shuttles for transportation, which wasn't in the eezo budget. 

All in all, it had been a normal day on the Nexus.

Tann kept his eyes narrowed while he directed the station from his haptic interfaces and tied up its loose ends. Next, he would begin his final walkabout on the station's public decks. But just as he began to power everything down a lumbering, craggy mountain of krogan ascended the stairs to the office. It was Nakmor Kesh, the superintendent.

"I assume something exploded," he said to her as politely as he could manage. Kesh never came to see him. She had placed her office on the other side of the Operations deck, as far away as possible, and he was more than fine with that. 

"Not yet, but we've still got a problem," she rumbled. She set a few documents down on the desk. "The Tempest is on its way home from Aya and I don't have enough room for Ryder in the habitation deck."

Tann blinked at the statement. "You don't need room," he reminded her. "Scott has been assigned to his father's cabin on the Hyperion."

"The _other_ Ryder hasn't been assigned anywhere," Kesh said. She placed her palm flatly on the paper documents, in a meaningful way that was also accusing. It occurred to Tann that she had printed them out for extra emphasis. "You've been running everything so tightly around here that we don't have any rooms in the human quadrant for Sara to stay in. You keep pushing back the work order I need to open them up."

Tann frowned. He was growing tired of the crew wasting paper, and Kesh had been bringing up that particular order for weeks now. He locked the drawers and cabinets with his omni-tool code lighting up at his wrist. He said, "Place her in the asari quadrant. Problem solved."

She shook her head. "It's full up now that the Luesinia's docked and defrosted." 

Tann's frown deepened. "Well, we don't have the iridium to spare in the budget. Kesh, I've told you that several times now. You'll simply have to put her somewhere else."

Kesh tapped the paper with a massive finger. "The only reason we don't have enough is because you're using it all to polish the public decks. You've been putting the iridium I need into the cultural center for the angara."

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked. "Would you prefer it if the first native inhabitants willing to talk to us were presented with melted bulkheads and sparking wires?"

"It won't matter much if the interior falls apart," she answered, clearly unmoved. "Things are going better around here, Number Eight, but you're still allocating resources like we're in a stage three meltdown. You need to ease up." 

Tann sighed and looked out the office window. His omni-tool faded. He wished the conversation was over because he had somewhere to be, and because Kesh had made an understandable point. He hated it when she did that; it went against everything he believed to be true about krogan. But she was right. The interior decks were, indeed, essential.

Beyond the glass, far below him in Colonial Affairs, Director Addison was holding a hand to her forehead while the flow of her department waned around her. She always looked as if everything was just about to head south into a disaster, even at the end of a calm day. 

And Addison wasn't the only one who tended toward caution, Tann supposed. They were all practicing their own visions of it, even Kesh. But welcoming the angara with a beautiful climate generator just wasn't in the cards.

"Sara can stay in her father's cabin with Scott for the moment," he decided, watching Addison place another hand on her forehead.

"That was my original plan, actually," Kesh admitted. "But now Vetra's staying with him. I got a message from her this morning."

Tann blinked, looked away from the office window. "Why is she staying with him?"

Kesh raised a brow. "You really want the details?"

Tann inwardly scrambled to connect the dots of such a vague statement. Did he want the details? He had no idea. He parsed the finality in her voice as quickly as he could, narrowed down the possibilities. There was only one bed in the cabin and it was a studio layout. Aliens cohabitated to reinforce several types of relationships, none of which he had any experience with outside of cold observation. 

The possibilities narrowed further, but not enough. 

Kesh was watching him like he should know exactly why Vetra was relocating. Tann realized that he was going to have to _wing it_ , as humans liked to say, unless he wanted her to see him in a moment of ignorance. And he didn't want that. She would enjoy it too much.

So he made a show of crossing his arms and hummed sagely. He hoped he looked like he understood the subtext. "Well, I can see how that might be inconvenient in... _Certain ways_."

"Exactly," Kesh said, revealing nothing helpful. She tapped on the paper again. "Doctor Carlyle's discharging Sara tomorrow so I need that iridium or she'll be stuck sleeping in a hallway when they get back."

Tann held out his hand and she gave him the papers. "I'll take care of it."

"Thanks, Number Eight." Kesh smiled with a wide crescent of teeth. "We'll get started on fixing everything up right away."

Tann headed down the stairs toward the entrance, tucked the papers under his arm. "No, you won't," he said. "We don't have the iridium to spare like I said before."

He always had to repeat himself with aliens, he thought to himself. Perhaps he should give her a helpful recording of his answers in the future.

But as he glanced over his shoulder, Kesh's smile was dropping into a dangerous frown and he abandoned the idea. He left her in the office, disappearing quickly into the crowd of the Operations deck and pushing away vivid images of krogan grip strength breaking every vertebra in his neck. 

There were no floor-shaking footfalls chasing after him, but he didn't relax until he reached the tram. As he sat down, he didn't know what he was going to do about Sara Ryder, but he was going to think of something. And he was going to make sure the cultural center opened before the angaran diplomatic attache arrived. The angara were the first alien species willing to negotiate with the Initiative. They might be the only one.

So he needed a symbol for them; something to prove the Initiative was worth allying with. Something spectacular. 

More importantly, he needed another success with his name plastered on it, like Eos. Eos was the only golden colony world that had begun to flourish, thanks to the efforts of Scott and the Pathfinder team on the Tempest. While Tann wasn't keen on the alien Remnant technology that had been the key to their success, he was secretly elated that his signature appeared on every document that had approved it.

And he needed to keep up successes with his name on them, just like that. 

When he reached the medical bay of the Ark Hyperion, where the staff still ignored him but the world moved at a much calmer pace, Sara was sitting up in her bed right where she should be. There were heavy cotton blankets over her lap to keep her warm, but the halo of machinery had been set aside permanently. She was reading a data-pad and a few more were piled neatly beside her. 

"You're late today," she said, looking up when he approached her. "I thought maybe something happened to you."

"I was battling a krogan," Tann replied. 

She seemed surprised by that. "Did you win?"

"Any time you say no to a krogan and survive the experience," he said to her, "is a win."

And he sat down next to the bed. Sara made a small _hmm_ noise, as if that had been a mysterious answer, then she set the data-pad aside to give him her full attention.

Doctor Carlyle had been meticulous with the medical bay's reports after the incident with Sara. But, as an extra measure, Tann had decided to visit her each day and speak to her personally. She would update him with some friendly conversation on the side and he considered her a part of his final walkabout. She always looked happy to see him and so it was an easy task to add.

He looked forward to seeing her, he thought to himself. There was no harm in admitting it.

"You're looking very well," he told her, because humans enjoyed that sort of conversation and because it was true. But as he spoke he couldn't help looking at the table next to the bed. His shirt was there, the one he had put over her shoulders when they met. "Will you be returning my uniform today?" he asked.

Sara reached out, smiled a little, and folded the collar down. "I haven't decided yet." 

The white and blue polyester wrinkled beneath her fingers as she let go of it. The shirt had taken up categorical residence with her other possessions, with the data-pads and the blankets and a standard-issue Andromeda Initiative coffee cup, but Tann wasn't certain why. And an empty clothes hanger was waiting in his closet next to seven perfectly ironed shirts and eight perfectly ironed pairs of pants. 

The lack of congruency gnawed at him. 

Sara rested her chin on her hands and smiled, clearly amused. He contemplated the problem with a tap of his fingers on Kesh's papers. In any other situation, he would have simply taken the item back, but her expression lacked animosity. On the contrary, stealing something that belonged to him seemed to cheer her up. 

"You're in luck," he decided, abandoning the clothes closet in his mind, "because I'm going to let you keep it for now." He then shuffled the papers and cleared his throat as if he was moving on in a business meeting. "Now," he went on, "the Tempest will be returning to the Nexus soon. I've come by to discuss your living arrangements."

The smile on her face began to fade. "Scott's coming back?"

Tann had a feeling she hadn't spoken to her brother on the QEC about their father yet. "In a few weeks, depending on the Scourge's drift," he affirmed, and then he explained the situation to her. When she seemed to understand he asked, "Is there anyone you would be comfortable rooming with until the issue is resolved?"

She thought it over, staring down at the blankets. "Can I stay with you?" she asked after a while, looking up again. "Or would that be weird?"

Tann blinked. There were a thousand reasons to say no to her request. Most of them involved his rocky professional relationship with her brother. A few of them involved his abysmal popularity rating on the Nexus, particularly with the human population. And one of them involved the fact that such a solution had never even occurred to him.

He should probably say no, he thought to himself. If it had been a good idea he would have already thought of it.

Why hadn't he thought of it? 

Tann couldn't help but suspect he had been distracted by the shirt. He kept a calm expression on his face while a pair of nurses passed by. They whispered between themselves, glancing at him, and moved on. 

"Weird isn't exactly how I'd describe it," he said when they were gone, "but it might be unwise. Surely there's someone else you'd prefer?" 

"I don't know anyone else on the Nexus," she said. "You're the only person who comes to visit me every day."

Tann hadn't known that. "Does it bother you?"

Sara shook her head and held up the sleeves of his uniform. "I really like seeing you."

Any resolve to say no to her dissolved into nothing. It dawned on him that she hadn't been stealing from him at all. She simply wanted him to have a reason to keep visiting her.

"Well," he said, "in that case, I suppose staying with me would be emotionally beneficial to your recovery." He hesitated, thinking about it. "We'll start as soon as possible," he added. "There's no need to settle you in Ryder's cabin if you'll be moving when he returns."

Sara wiggled the sleeves at him, beaming. It was difficult not to bask in the approval. 

And so the next morning, after Doctor Carlyle had supplied a schedule for physical therapy and discharged her, Sara made her way down a long hallway in the salarian quadrant of the habitation deck. She carried a small, standard-issue suitcase and had Tann's shirt folded under her arm. A pair of salarian colonists were passing by and they looked down at her but didn't say anything as they continued on to their destinations. 

Tann walked with her, carrying her other, heavier suitcases.

He glanced over his shoulder at the receding figures of the colonists, looked forward again. There was something intimate and strange about what was happening, something he couldn't quite pinpoint. But on the other hand, he was satisfied with this outcome to his problem. It was for the best that Sara stay with him. He was the Director of the Initiative, after all, with endless resources at his disposal to provide for her comfort. He would be a perfect host.

Just as important, the cultural center would remain right on schedule to open, just in time for the angara to arrive and be deeply impressed by it.

Sara glanced at him as they walked, with a flush of color drifting over her cheeks. Tann nodded at her in an austere way that he felt was very... Host-ish. 

And when they arrived at his quarters he said, "Here we are," in his grandest, most hostly of voices. He beckoned for her to follow him inside while he set her suitcases down on a table. 

"Oh," she said softly, looking up at everything.

In the Milky Way Tann's living arrangments had been small compared to the space that now spread before them. Here there were vaulted chrome ceilings in a luxurious sitting room, with a maze of hallways near the back leading to salarian amenities. Tall windows that framed a view of the Heleus cluster revealed the Scourge drifting over its stars in long tendrils of effluvium.

Tann's eyelids leveled across the middle of his eyes as he took in the view. He had to admit that he spent most of his time at an office in every galaxy he had been in so far. But the square footage of his quarters in this galaxy was an obvious status symbol and he could appreciate that.

Sara looked around at the furnishings and then the stars. Being presented with such opulence seemed to bother her. She moved her line of vision over silver couches made of genuine _gwaskin_ leather and white holographic flower vases until it landed right on Tann, and she looked up into his eyes as if she had never seen him before. "Tann," she asked very hesitantly, "why is your apartment so big?"

He was caught completely off guard by the question. "What do you mean?"

She set her smaller suitcase down while her hair drifted over her shoulders. "Is the rest of habitation like this?"

"No," he admitted, further perplexed by her reaction. "It would be wasteful. But I suppose I'm afforded a few privileges due to my position, much like your brother on the Tempest."

Sara said, "I'm still catching up, remember? What do you do on the Nexus?"

Tann blinked rapidly at that. He found that he couldn't stop. "Excuse me?"

Sara spoke very patiently. "I mean, what's your job?"

She was obviously experiencing disorientation due to leaving the medical bay. Tann pulled at the fabric of his sleeves, slipping a few fingers into them out of habit, and waited for her to recover. But a moment that felt like an eternity began to stretch between them. And the silence of his quarters, usually peaceful and appealing after a long day, began to grow awkward.

"I'm the Director of the Andromeda Initiative," Tann finally said, staring down at her and blinking. "Jien Garson's eighth successor," he then added, as if that might help jog her memory.

It didn't. 

And as Sara's eyes widened impossibly large, Tann realized that he had never told her exactly who he was. Their first meeting hadn't involved a formal introduction and the meetings that came after hadn't seemed to require one. Her behavior indicated that she believed he was important. And so he had assumed that she knew he was the Director, or that someone in the medical bay had informed her. Someone should have.

Obviously, no one had bothered.

Sara clutched his shirt as if keeping it held far more gravity than before. She flushed red with the revelation and handed it back to him. "I'm sorry," she said. "Everyone just called you by your name."

Tann forced himself to stop blinking, looked down at the fabric. Getting it back wasn't satisfying like he had expected. "Yes, that's true," he said as lightly as he could, which wasn't very light at all. "I... Well, you could say I run a very informal workplace." 

"Is this really okay?" she asked. "I can stay somewhere else."

He frowned, looked at her again. "Of course it's all right," he replied, pushing down any lingering embarrassment. He cleared his throat and made a sweeping gesture to his door, which was still wide open. "As you can see," he went on, "I have an open-door policy on the Nexus."

Sara hesitated. "Did you just make a pun at me?"

Tann watched her carefully and committed to the motion, extending his fingers gracefully to the open door.

And after a moment, she placed her hand over her mouth to hide a smile. "That's awful. That's really cheesy."

He lifted his eyelids upward, remembered to smile back after a fraction of a second. Humans tended to say what they didn't quite mean, and she was no different. She obviously approved of the cheese. He said, "You may stay until the issue with your quadrant is resolved."

Then he brought her over to the windows and stood in front of the starscape grandly, like a Director should when they opened their home to someone. "Welcome to the Andromeda Initiative, Sara Ryder," he continued. "As you can see, our presence here is proof that the dream of our founder is alive and well in this galaxy. Ignore anyone who says otherwise." He nodded to himself, took a breath. "They are merely haters."

Sara seemed bolstered by that. "Okay," she said. "Will you give me a tour?"

He looked away from the stars and nodded. They went through every room together, with Tann explaining anything that might seem foreign to her, and then he showed her the accommodations for asari that salarian architecture built after First Contact always featured. There was a private bedroom and a bath that would suit Sara's similar physiology just fine. 

And Tann found himself to be a good host once again, despite the rocky start. 

When they finished the tour Sara opened up her suitcases on her new bed. Clothes and photos and tightly packed mementos tumbled out in a pile of sentimental colors. She began to sort everything on the silver silk coverlet, unwrapping a framed picture of her mother and then another of her brother on the Citadel. The pictures smiled up at the ceiling. 

Nearby, there were handmade curtains hanging over the view window that matched the bed's coverlet. Tann spread the fabric and stared at it while she unpacked, contemplating why someone would go to such trouble. A Thessian landscape had been embroidered with white thread and a precision that only salarian intensity could have achieved. 

And the names of the original occupants of the space, now deceased, lingered in Tann's memory as he studied the embroidery. He knew the name of every person on the station, living or dead or exiled. It was his job to make sure they went where they needed to be.

"Will this be adequate for you?" he asked Sara.

"Yes," she said brightly behind him. He could hear her hanging up her clothes."Thank you so much."

Tann pressed the silk between his bare fingers for a moment and then he turned away from it, satisfied with her response. He helped her place a few of her photos on the higher shelves.

Everything was going to be just fine. If Scott and Vetra could cohabitate despite the levo-dextro differences, there was no reason that he and Sara couldn't get along. So he headed out for his walkabout on the Nexus' public decks, moving among the mostly alien colonists and listening to snippets of their conversations without joining any of them. 

It still needed to be done.

And later in the evening, after Sara had begun her eight-hour sleep cycle, Tann returned home to begin his daily schedule anew. He slept for an hour, then exercised until his muscles ached. He took a warm bath that was followed by an efficient breakfast. He built a small model ship, recreationally, for exactly forty two minutes. 

Then he returned to work while a small crew maintained the graveyard shift with him. And this was the sum of Tann's personal and professional life, which he rarely deviated from.


	3. Chapter 3

On the far side of Tann's quarters, beyond an artificial solarium and a dalatrass' private conference room, an atrium of pools reflected the stars. When Jien Garson had been raising funds for the Andromeda Initiative, and when the Nexus was only a blueprint, the space had been purchased and designed by a circle of salarians from the Union colony of Jaeto. They had stamped " _intergalactic explorer_ " next to their names in their family databases, and then they left the Milky Way forever. 

They had probably expected to have a grand adventure together. 

But, like many others, the circle had never awoken to see their dream on the other side of dark space. Each one of them had perished when the Nexus crashed into the energy cloud called the Scourge. And so the space had remained silent and unused. And it was still mostly silent now, and mostly unused, except for Tann laying on his back near the edge of a pool and staring up at his own feet. 

He was counting to twenty. 

"Legs down," he said when he reached it. He placed his hands on his calves and curled his legs inward. "Knees tucked to your chest for twenty-five again."

Next to him, Sara mimicked his movements. There was a sheen of sweat on her forehead and her eyebrows were pinched together in concentration. She carefully pulled her legs toward her chest and closed her eyes.

"One," he began again, "two, three, four..."

She exhaled a soft breath of pain but held steady. The physical therapy that Doctor Carlyle had prescribed to her was as much about restoring her muscle mass as it was about reminding her brain how to control those muscles, and how to move with confidence again. The position should have been a relaxing stretch -- Tann himself was exerting very little effort-- but for Sara, it was a mountain to be scaled in bad weather.

She scaled it every morning. Tann led her through the steps so she could concentrate.

And he turned his head, checking her form. As he watched her, it was difficult to imagine what Andromeda might have been like if she had become the Hyperion's Pathfinder instead of her brother. His thoughts drifted to it often now that she was staying with him. But he couldn't picture her in combat armor on Eos or fighting the Kett scattered around the star cluster. He couldn't imagine her threatening their leader, the Archon.

The only image that seemed reasonable to Tann was Sara getting along with the crew of the Tempest. After living with her for a week, he believed she could have charmed the teeth off a krogan.

Sara opened her eyes and looked over at him. "You stopped counting," she said, flushed from the exertion but smiling. "Is something wrong?"

Tann blinked rapidly and looked upward again. "Not at all."

He resumed counting. 

He changed position, as did Sara, and the counting began again. She would have coffee and take a bath when they were done. Tann would immediately go back to his office. That was how it had been each day so far. Tann's schedule hadn't changed much.

But when they were done this morning, Sara didn't leave the atrium or get up to make coffee. Instead, she grabbed a towel and sat at the edge of the pool. She dipped her legs into the water, cautious at first, then waved them around while she dried her neck and her face. Afterward, she held the towel and watched the water rippling against her skin.

And she had never done this before. Tann had been preparing to leave the atrium, just as he usually did, but turned back and approached her. He ran through conversational openings, taking into account the fact that she looked gloomy, then he leaned over. His fingers ached for his sleeves and he ignored them.

"How are you feeling?" he asked her. A very human start.

Sara hid her face in the towel. "Like this should be easier," she mumbled through cotton. "It was easier six hundred years ago."

"You're doing well considering your circumstances," he said, nodding his horns once. "There's no need to worry," he added. "You would feel weaker than before even if your pod hadn't been damaged. The labs didn't have time to completely perfect the stasis technology."

"Great," she said bleakly through the towel as if that wasn't comforting at all. Then she removed the towel from just her eyes. "Can I tell you something?" she asked, and when he nodded she confessed, "I don't feel anything at all about what's happening to us."

Tann sat down next to her, avoiding the water. He said, "You don't feel the physical therapy helping you?"

"No, that's not it." She set the towel completely aside, revealing a small frown. "I know what happened to my dad on Habitat Seven, and I know we're in a new galaxy, but it's like my brain hasn't absorbed it. I haven't felt anything since the first day." She hesitated for a moment and then said, "I don't know what I'm going to say to Scott about it when he comes back."

"Your brother is your first circle," Tann said. "He'll understand because you share a kinship."

She shook her head. "I don't think he will. He was really excited about coming here."

Sara looked down at the water and seemed certain about her brother. Tann didn't know Scott as well as she did, so he couldn't exactly disagree with the prediction. 

But memories slipped through his mind. Addison's depression and Kesh's preoccupation with the krogan settlement. The endless complaints of the newly awoken colonists whom he was host to. And in the spaces between these memories, there was the face of Sloane, his previous Security Director, who had her outcast planet with its rebels and its lonely bar called _Tartarus_. 

"In my time here it's been difficult to predict how an alien will react to anything," Tann admitted, more to himself than to her. He frowned as he thought of so many variables. "It's always different for each of you."

"How is it for you?" Sara asked.

He pulled himself back from his memories, glanced at her. "I react to everything as the Director of the Initiative should," he said. His eyelids retracted for a fraction of a second. "While others focus on the immediate I take the long view. The mission fulfilling its role in Andromeda matters above everything else."

And that was true, he thought to himself, silently correcting his eyelids as they retracted again. 

"Everything?" she asked.

He nodded firmly. "Everything."

"I don't think I could act like that," she said. "It seems really cold."

Tann would have been surprised if she thought it was a reasonable stance. "You're not the first human to tell me that," he replied. "I'm beginning to believe it's a biological difference between us."

"What do you think should I do?" she asked.

Tann had no idea. He looked down at her, aware of how close they were. People didn't get very close to Jarun Tann, eighth acting Director of the Andromeda Initiative. More than that, people didn't ask him for advice. When he offered it unprompted they didn't respond well. And explaining a mathematical equivalent probably wouldn't reach Sara, nor a comparison to economic impact analyses. Aliens, particularly humans, were emotional creatures. 

So he reached over. Sara's skin was colder than he expected when he touched her hand. She must have been using the water to warm herself up despite the exercise. He lifted her palm, cradling it in his own, and then placed a finger from his other hand right in the center. 

"When I do this," Tann began, "there is a small amount of time between me touching you and your brain acknowledging that touch and reacting to it, correct?"

Sara looked up at him, looked down at their hands. She blushed.

And she was perfectly demonstrating his point. He continued, "The physical is not so different from the emotional. Right now you're traveling between the stimulus of the events you've experienced and the full emotional reaction." He lifted his finger, tapped it gently against her head above the curve of her ear. "I can't say what will happen when you get there or how you will feel, but biology dictates that you will arrive. You should be compassionate to yourself until then."

Sara looked away toward the water. "I'm kind of afraid I'm going to fall apart."

"You seem sturdy enough despite the injury."

"On the inside, I mean."

Tann was undaunted. He pressed his fingers against her chin so she was facing him again, looked into her eyes. "We'll make sure you fall right back together," he assured her. "I'll put all of my best people on it. We'll polish you until you're as good as new."

That finally coaxed a smile out of her. "Okay," she said. "I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens."

"Exactly." He nodded his horns grandly as a Director should. "Rome wasn't built in a day." 

Sara laughed at that and immediately pulled her hand away. "Humans don't really talk like that," she insisted. She pulled her legs out of the water and dried them off. Tann glanced down at his fingers and tucked them into his sleeves.

She was still smiling. "Come on," she said brightly. "I want you to have coffee with me."

He helped her to her feet and then offered his arm to her so she could steady herself. Sara let go when she felt stable. She walked carefully, with her footsteps echoing between his own as they headed to the kitchen.

That had gone well, he thought. Living with Sara was enjoyable so far.

And, smiling to himself, he carried the pleasant lift of companionship and caffeine with him back to the Operations deck, where Colonial Affairs spread before him and where the tide of colonists waiting to be placed had already begun to swell. He could see his office window in the distance with Garson's desk waiting for him to start the morning shift. 

He nodded at Foster Addison standing atop her balcony office as he passed by below, but she looked flustered for some reason. She jabbed her finger at her omni-tool with an expression that could have withered every tree on Eos. And she wasn't alone; two salarians, Del Jasin and Melo Tanos, were with her. A pair of senior engineers in Colonial Affairs was an ominous sign. 

Tann immediately checked his omni, shut it with a snap of his wrist, and changed course. His smile evaporated. He had seven missed messages. "Did something explode while I was gone?" he asked as he approached the trio, walking up the steps.

"The cooling system is failing on decks five through seven," Del explained shortly. Her eye membranes were tight. "There's steam and hot water everywhere."

"Then what are we all doing up here?" he asked, with a patient tone he didn't feel. A failed cooling system led to temperature spikes and hot water escaping beyond the recycling nodes.

"We've been trying to find you," Del answered. "We've been waiting for you to approve our status downstairs for twenty-five minutes and seven seconds."

"Eight seconds," Melo added uneasily.

Addison said, "Tann, where the hell have you been?"

Tann hadn't realized he was so late. "I was attending to some personal business," he answered. But it sounded vague and inadequate even to him. He pushed away the urge to make excuses and turned his attention back to Del. "It's difficult for me to believe that you would wait around and let a system overheat in my absence," he said. "If the station is about to depressurize do you plan to remain on standby?"

Del's voice was sharp enough to cut him. "You specifically told us to do that in our last meeting." She angrily tapped the data-pad she was holding. "You said the Kett could be tearing down our doorstep and the hourly report still needed to be sent and approved first."

Tann's thought process froze as he was confronted with the data-pad. Del took notes constantly. His words waited for him in bright orange, chiding him with their finality. He did, in fact, perfectly remember his order to the station crew now that he thought about it. It had been five weeks ago. At the time the possibility that he would be unavailable or forget to check his omni-tool had never even occurred to him.

It had never happened before.

Melo chimed in, "Kesh is still on Elaaden visiting Vorn. We report directly to you right now."

Tann's stomach sank through the floor. He nodded at Melo. "Your status is approved. Go fix it," he said quietly.

Melo vaulted over the railing, skipping the stairs completely, and pushed through the crowd of colonists. He would be faster than anyone else at both reaching and repairing the problem. Tann ignored a strong urge to pace while they all waited. Addison had her hands against her forehead and Del was eyeing him suspiciously.

He had become distracted and made a mistake, Tann thought to himself.

Again.

He added it to the future galactic history book with the other mistakes. And Kesh would have a field day with this one when she returned from the krogan settlement. She would inevitably link it to the cultural center, and her previous statement that he only cared for the public decks. If three lower decks flooded with water she might even move to demote him. There was no shortage of people around Tann that believed they were better qualified for his position.

And, judging from the dark expression hovering on Addison's face, she would concur with Kesh's motion. They would only need to convince the Security Director, a turian named Tiran Kandros, to move forward.

Tann folded his arms over his chest and adopted a veneer of calm disinterest. Inwardly, his thoughts spiraled with an expanding fractal of disastrous outcomes while they waited. 

Melo's blue face popped up on the screen of Del's omni-tool a few minutes later. "Temperature stable," he said proudly, collapsing the fractal. "No permanent damage to report."

Tann exhaled, closed his eyes briefly.

Del smiled at Melo's visage. "You're an asset to the department, Tanos."

"Thank you, Dalatrass Ja--" His eyes grew wide and he paused. "I mean Del."

Del closed her omni-tool and her smile faded with the orange light. She looked over at Tann and said, "You have to trust the crew to make the right decisions if something happens. This is ridiculous. Between you and the rest of the bureaucracy stacked up around here, we have to stop every time someone sneezes."

"The bureaucracy is here to help you," Addison said reproachfully, switching sides at the hint of insult toward her position.

"The chain of command exists for a reason," Tann agreed, nodding his horns solemnly. "So does protocol. Relying on snap decisions made by whoever happens to be nearby is no way to--"

Del interrupted, "If the protocol is so important to you then why were three decks about to flood? Where were you?"

Tann's mouth shut with a click of his teeth. The interruption grated and the question lodged itself sharply in his stomach.

Where _had_ he been?

Tann had been sitting at a chrome table with Sara in his kitchen. There had been clouds of warm steam floating in the air and he had been drinking a cup of coffee that was one hundred and ninety galactic standard degrees. Sara had been speaking quietly about living on the Citadel and touring the _Destiny Ascension_ , which was a Council starship that he had built once in miniature with brass and copper pieces but never actually set foot in.

The memory was innocuous. It had been friendly conversation.

But he felt strangely protective of it. And it was a scandalous reason to be late, particularly by salarian standards. His horns burned and Del noticed. And Del, who was no longer Dalatrass Jasin, began to scrutinize him with low eyelids. He could feel everyone within earshot straining to listen for his answer, churning a doubt inside him that demanded some sort of action to quell it.

And so, in a moment that bordered on reckless, he drew a strategic card he had been keeping close to his chest. 

"If the current protocol has become such an inconvenience," he said to her, "why don't we try something new? From this point on inform the departments to send reports to my office once a day instead of hourly." He hooked his arms behind his back, gestured his head at Addison. "And contact the other Directors for emergency approvals if I'm not available." 

The flow of Colonial Affairs below them ground to a halt. The deputies all looked up from their stations and the newly defrosted colonists they had been processing. Addison's eyebrows rose several galactic centimeters in surprise. 

And Del gasped. He suspected that she knew exactly what he was doing, but she also knew when to take a deal. She started writing rapidly on her data-pad. "Summary and full statistical reports?" she asked, dropping the inquisition.

"Of course," he said. "I expect them to be complete and double-checked."

Del's eyes narrowed and she wrote faster. "Once every Standard Galactic Day or orbital?"

"Standard galactic."

"Hardcopy or digital?"

"No need to waste paper resources," Tann said smoothly. He looked around at the attentive faces of the deputies. "Now, send a memo," he said to everyone. He clapped his hands together a single time. "I want you all to think of this as an opportunity to prove yourselves fully capable in the event of my absence. If quality drops I reserve the right to reverse the decision."

The deputies murmured amongst themselves while the colonists waited, puzzled by the delay.

Del finished writing, tucking the pad and stylus into her pocket. She looked deeply relieved. "You won't need to reverse it," she said. She raced down the stairway while the deputies continued talking amongst themselves.

Tann watched her go, noted that he hadn't dismissed her. And Del's confidence was expected but, inwardly, he didn't share it. Quality would drop without his careful guidance and he'd reverse the decision in a day or two. A lack of reports inevitably led to incidents.

So it wasn't a matter of _if_ , only _when_ the decision would be reversed. The crew themselves would force his hand. And Tann knew, with great certainty, that they would appreciate the reversal when it arrived.

Addison's eyebrows dropped low as she appraised him. She placed her hands on her hips. "What's gotten into you?"

"I'm simply playing the cards as they're dealt," he said with an impassive expression. "Do you think it's a bad decision?"

"No," Addison replied. "I think it's long overdue."

Tann shook his head. That was naive.

"But I also think it's manipulative," she added sternly. "Everyone will be too busy talking about the daily reports to even mention that you almost let three decks flood while you were off doing god knows what with Alec's daughter." 

Tann's impassive expression faltered. He said, "I wasn't aware you knew about that."

" _Every_ human knows about it," Addison replied. "Half of my department thinks you've carried her off and locked her in your quarters to bother Scott."

Indeed, a few of the deputies looked up from their stations again, as if this new conversation was just as interesting as the previous. It was mostly men of the human variety, Tann noted. A few women and asari. He sensed that he wouldn't be avoiding the subject of Sara quite so easily with them.

And one of them who was working nearby, a young man named Brecka, said, "You've got to let her out, Tann. A bunch of us got our hair done just to meet her."

Tann's eyes narrowed as he tried to suss the context. "Is that part of a social ritual that I'm unaware of?"

"Yeah," Brecka said. "You have to make an impression with a girl like that."

Addison placed her hands on her forehead. "This isn't a match-making cruise."

"...Sorry, Director Addison."

Admittedly, no one looked particularly sorry about their interest. Brecka's hair was newly trimmed and glossed to the point that it reflected the fluorescent lights. A woman next to him, Deputy Shaw, had gone so far as to dye her hair purple and curl it. And Shaw primped her curls, looking quite confident, while she whispered something to Brecka.

Matchmaking, Tann thought. Of course.

But it was difficult to be interested in their chances. They were deputies, after all. Tann shifted his attention back to Addison. "Sara's been spending her time recovering her strength," he explained. "She wants to meet the Pathfinder while she's standing confidently on her own two feet." He then added, with irritation creeping into his voice, "She is not being held against her will."

"That doesn't explain why you're the one helping her," Addison said. "Tann, we have specialists on ice for almost everything."

"I'm just making sure she recovers and adapts to life in a new galaxy," he replied. "Showing her the ropes, as you say. Like a mentor." He paused, thinking about it. "Or a friend."

"Mentors don't look as smug about it as you do. Neither do friends."

Tann would have rolled his eyes if it was possible for him to do so. Addison was convinced he had never helped anyone in the history of any galaxy yet accounted for, but she eventually dropped the subject.

She sighed as her staff returned to work. "I still need those shuttles," she said. She must have thought he was feeling generous after the protocol change. "Now that Eos has an established outpost I can't get the colonists down there fast enough."

Tann nodded. "The cultural center is ahead of schedule. You may have half of your requested number."

She scoffed. "I don't know why you think the angara will be impressed by that monstrosity."

"Why wouldn't they?" he asked. "We have a rich cultural history to share with them."

She groaned. "They're going to think we're colonial wads," she said morosely, turning away from him. "I don't know what I'll do if they reject the alliance. It'll be a nightmare for customs."

And, after that, the rest of the day continued without incident and without hourly reports. As Tann gained distance from his decision, he knew he had been rash with the protocol change. It wasn't like him to panic so easily.

He stared up at the holo-screen in his office, narrowed his eyes. But the numbers were impossible to focus on and the statistics of the Nexus felt far away. Garson's desk seemed smaller than ever before. His thoughts kept drifting to the memory of Sara's fingers resting lightly on his arm while he poured coffee for her, with her gray eyes watching him like he hung the stars up.

He hadn't even noticed how late he had become because of her. More than that, it hadn't even occurred to him to care.

And, for a time, he had completely forgotten that he was the Director of the Andromeda Initiative, with all the attention to detail and politicking that his position required. Tann's thoughts began to circle toward the certainty that something must be wrong with him.


End file.
